Clever Twitter Write Up: The Muskrat!

November 21, 2022

I am not into the tweeter thing. I do find glancing at the flood of Twitter mine run off interesting. Because I live in a hollow with its very own toxic lake of assorted man-made compounds, I know drainage when I smell it.

The article which caught my attention is “I Don’t Want to Go Back to Social Media.” What is interesting is that the author who is a software developer and former Twitter user.

The write up makes what might be a statement of interest to a legal eagle; to wit:

Musk is an obvious fraud.

The highlight of the write up is the use of the neologism muskrat. The idea is that estimable Elon Musk is either a metaphorical rat (Rattus norvegicus) or muskrat (Ondatra zibethicus). The figure of speech is ambiguous, and disambiguation is a great deal of work. (I think that is the reason super duper free Web search systems are unable to provide consistent on point results for a query.

Now back to the Muskrat (article style, not the furry, four legged variety known to present some challenges when living in proximity to humanoids.

The write up asserts:

…Twitter brought out the worst in me. I struggled to be “my best self” on Twitter. Admittedly, I struggle to be my best self almost everywhere, but Twitter was the worst situation for that. The incentives on Twitter are perverse: the short character limits, the statistical counts of retweets and likes, the unknown followers and readers, the platform and publicity all conspire to corrupt you, to push you toward superficial tweets that incite the crowd.

The write up ends with a call to action; specifically:

Consider the alternative of avoiding social media altogether. You can live without it. I would argue that you can live better. You’ll get nothing, and like it!

I want to end this short blog post with a quote from Captain and Tennille (Willis Alan Ramsey and O/BO Capasso who probably love the tweeter thing):

And they whirl and they twirled and they tango
Singin’ and jinglin’ a jango
Floatin’ like the heavens above
Looks like muskrat love
Do, do, do, do, do
Do, do-e, do

Yep, do d0.

Stephen E Arnold, November 21, 2022

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Business process, News, Twitter

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.